Modern Irish - Caisleán Uí Néill nó An Bhean Dubh ón Sliabh
‘O’Neill’s Castle’, or ‘The Dark-haired Woman from the Mountain’
Tomás Ó Criomhthain (1855-1937), in his autobiography An tOiléanach, says that he sang Caisleán Uí Néill at his wedding. He remarks that he had a ‘good knowledge’ (‘eolas maith’) of the song and the melody ‘well-polished’ (‘an t-aer go slachtmhar’), and that everyone in the house was silent until the song was finished. 1 The speaker in the song is the abandoned young woman, who laments the lover who has left her. For readers of medieval Irish literature, the woman’s distress, her garden ‘grown wild’ and her wandering for ‘nine days, nine seasons and eleven weeks’, picking sloe-berries from the tops of branches, would recall Mór Muman (Mór of Munster), who wanders about Ireland in rags for two years, and recovers her senses after she goes to bed with Fíngin mac Áeda, King of Munster. 2 The song acquires some significance in An tOileánach, for elsewhere in the narrative Tomás recounts his visit to the small neighboring island Inisvickillane, where he fell in love with the daughter of Ó Dálaigh. A ‘match’ (cleamhnas) between the two was in progress, but Tomás’s sister disapproved, and instead arranged a marraige to Máire Ní Chatháin. Their wedding took place on 5 February 1878. The song was omitted from the first edition of An tOileánach (An Seabhac 1929), for uncertain reasons. One scholar regarded the omission as deliberate.3 It has also been argued that Tomás did not sing the song at his wedding, but added it later for literary effect, long after his wife and the Ó Dálaigh woman had died.4 Tomás himself speaks only of the ‘fine song’ (‘amhrán breá’) and, as Ó Coileáin observes, does not himself attach any particular meaning to it.5 If he was aware that he, like the ‘fine, gentle lad’ of the song, had left the young woman on the island, he does not say it. The text of the song as Ó Criomhthain wrote it down is given here. It is recited in the Munster dialect by Professor Emeritus Seán Ó Coileáin. The digital editing for this recording was done by Saimon Clark, Media Editor, Language Centre, University of Cambridge.
1 ‘Ní cheapfá go raibh aon teanga in aon duine insa tigh, beag nó mór, nó go raibh sé críochnaithe (p. 191) ‘You wouldn’t think that there was a tongue in anyone in the house, young or old, until it was finished’.
2 T.P. O’Nolan (ed.), ‘Mór of Munster and the fate of Cuanu son of Cailchin’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 30 C (1912), 261-82; S. O Coileáin, ‘The Structure of a Literary Cycle’, Ériu 25 (1974) 88-125.
3 Máire Mac an tSaoi (Cruise O’Brien) commented: ‘to An Seabhac, who was himself the product of the song culture, its meaning was so clear a betrayal that he felt it could not be allowed to stand”: M. Cruise O’Brien, ‘An tOileánach by Tomás Ó Criomhthain (1856-I937)’, in J. Jordan (ed.), The Pleasures of Gaelic Literature (Dublin 1977), 25-38, p. 36.
4 C. Ó Háinle, ‘Tomas Ó Criomhthain agus “Caisleán Uí Néill”’, in Iris-Ieabhar Mha Nuad (1985), 84-109, p. 98. Lillis Ó Laoire explores the possibility that Tomás may have sung the song at his wedding, as seemingly inappropriate songs were sometimes performed at such occasions, and might, in the moment of performance, expose unresolved inner conflicts (An Chreag i Lár na Farraige (Indreabhán 2007), 232-36).
5 S. Ó Coiléain, ‘An tOileánach’, in A. Ó Muircheartaigh (ed.), Oidhreacht an Bhlascaoid (Dublin 1989), 192-207, p. 203.
